The Secretary-General of the Commonwealth will be making an official visit to Sri Lanka this week, Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced.

This will be Patricia Scotland QC’s first visit to Sri Lanka since she assumed the Office of Secretary-General in April 2016.

The Secretary-General will meet with TNA leader, R. Sampanthan, as well as Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, among several other ministers.

Tensions between local fishermen and Sinhalese continue to mount in Vadamarachchi East after a Tamil fisherman’s boat was burnt on Sunday night, following a similar attack on the boat of a Tamil fisherman from the same area last week.

A Northern Provincial Centre of the Ministry of National Integration, Reconciliation and Official Languages was opened off the A9 road in Kilinochchi today with much fanfare. 

The event was criticised by locals however, who questioned how the office could aid reconciliation and national integration whilst the military still remained. 

The office of a Grama sevaka in Jaffna district was attacked today, just days after he gave information to the police about gang activity and sword attacks in the area. 

Rajathurai Yesuthasan, the GS for Vannar Pannai North-East J/100 division was attacked by a group of 8 men who arrived on four motorbikes.

The Sri Lankan military announced that soldiers had expanded the Army Base Hospital in Mullaitivu earlier this year, as the military continues to consolidate its presence in the North-East.

The Sri Lankan military arranged a Buddhist ceremony, attended by a senior Buddhist monk at a army base in Mullaitivu earlier this month.

A 32-year-old former LTTE cadre died suddenly at his home in Chavakachcheri, Jaffna on Saturday.

Konamalai Pratheeban was found unconscious in the water tank of his home. He had gone out to pick banana leaves for his mother’s death anniversary rituals, and relatives had gone looking for him when he failed to return.

Mr Pratheeban was rushed to Chavakachcheri Hospital but medics were unable to revive him.

Relatives said Mr Pratheeban had been arrested by Sri Lankan troops at the end of the war and placed in a detention camp.

A Colombo court has granted bail to two Sri Lankan navy intelligence officers accused of abducting and murdering 11 Tamil youths.

The Sri Lankan navy officers, identified as Kasthurige Gamini and Aruna Thushara Mendis, were released on a Rs. 100,000 cash bail and two personal sureties of Rs. 500,000 each. Their passports have also been impounded.

The two stand accused of aiding other suspects in the navy moving the bodies of 11 Tamil youth out of the Trincomalee Navy camp from 2008 to 2009.

The main suspect in the case former Lieutenant Commander Chandana Prasad Hettiarachchi is reported to still be absconding.

The Sri Lankan military showcased the combat skills of its “Infantry Special Mission Groups (ISMG)” at an army base in Punanai last month, highlighting the use troops in “covert and overt operations”.

Almost ten years since the end of the armed conflict, the Sri Lankan military has approved the permanent appointment of nearly 39,000 Civil Security Department personnel in a ceremony this month, Colombo Page reports. 

The CSD orginates from the National Home Guard Service which was effectively a volunatary paramilitary organisation run by the Sri Lankan government in border villages to the North-East where locals were recruited to provide intelligence on Tamil armed resistance movements.